Dog Bites Man: An open letter to Reverend Mark Sandlin

You’ve reminded me lately of an old
journalistic adage that says “Dog Bites Man” is not a story. “Man Bites Dog”…..
now THAT’S a story.

In the wake of the ongoing story of a county
clerk jailed for contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to
same sex couples, you have started a hashtag that’s gaining popularity. For
those who don’t know, Reverend Sandlin is a Progressive Christian blogger, a
fan of writing his own headlines in the third person, and aficionado of
creating inspirational Facebook memes with his own quotes on them. A cisgender
and heterosexual minister, he has also taken it upon himself to “change the
dialogue” over Kim Davis. In doing so, he’s decided to ask people to tell their
own stories about how they, like Kim Davis, once hated gay, bi, and transgender
folk. He has asked them to offer her empathy and forgiveness. His hashtag is
#IWasKimDavis.

Sorry, Rev. This is an open letter after all, and I’m
sure most of the people who will read this won’t know the context of what I’ll
discuss here.

Before I get into my points of disagreement,
I’d like to say that I agree with much of your sentiment. It is indeed incumbent
upon Christians to offer forgiveness and grace to those who persecute us. In
Matthew 5:44, we are told,

“But I tell you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you….”

“Those who persecute you”. Let me tell you a
little bit about how that intersects with my life.

I live in California’s Contra Costa County. I’m
sure you reacall 2008, when our state Supreme Court ruled that marriage licenses
must be issued to same sex couples. In San Francisco County and Alameda County,
clerk offices stayed open, eager to issue licenses the moment that they were permitted
by the courts to do so. Naturally, the protestors of Westboro Baptist Church
were there, spitting and stomping on American and Rainbow flags, toting signs
with crude images of men engaging in anal sex and inscriptions insisting that
God hates those couples now entering into holy union and damns them to hell.

Contra Costa is slightly further afield in
the Bay Area. Our county clerk’s offices closed at the regular time and opened
at the regular time the next day, ready to accommodate all. Never missing an opportunity,
Westboro were there with their flags and their signs, lungs rested to scream
anew at those in my county who were lined up outside to get their marriage licenses.
I was in that line, along with the woman who was then my partner of 11 years
and was shortly to become my wife. Together, walked past a gauntlet searing
hatred that stopped just short of assault. As long lines tend to be, it was
very slow. We were given plenty of time to absorb their disgust at us for our
wish to enter into holy wedded union. They shouted until they spat what a beasts
and demons we were. They looked at loving couples like my wife and I. and
screamed at us that we were subhuman and Satanic. Try to imagine, Reverend
Sandlin, what it was to be greeted line
in this manner on this longed for and hoped for day after eleven loving years
together. My wife trembled, terrified. I had to stifle my own fear to comfort
her in the face of such degradation that nobody could deserve. She heard in the voices of Westboro the echoes
of words said too frequently to her in the past. I will not go too deeply into
her story here. Suffice to say, she is deeply aggrieved by what happened when
she transitioned gender.

We didn’t get married that day, but we got
our license. We waited until June, when I was on break from my teaching
position so we could enjoy what small honeymoon we could afford. On the last day of
work before vacation, my coworkers threw a shower for me. All the staff came. I
broke down, bawling like a small child, trying to articulate how much this
blessing meant to me. They smiled. We broke bread. We drank. We went on break,
and I got married.

That Fall, many of the people who were
ostensibly there to congratulate me on my coming nuptials voted alongside the majority
of my fellow citizens in California that I should not be permitted the same
holy rite that they pretended to celebrate. Free food and drink’s hard to turn
down, I suppose.

Being a transgender woman who loves another
transgender woman, I have lost jobs, security, and friendships because of who I
am. Once, I came across a former coworker from the job where I came out many
years after we both left. She told me why she left. As a supervisor, she was a part
of administration meetings where I had become a running dirty joke. They made
filthy insinuations and cruel mockery on private, and smiled sweetly at me in
the hallways. This lasted from that I came out and announced my intention to
transition gender until long after I left on my final day. For all I know, I’m
a joke still shared by people there, a reminder of the “Good Ol’ Days”. I
shouldn’t have been shocked, I suppose. This job had demoted me after I came
out, and made my work deeply uncomfortable until I felt compelled to leave.
Still, I was sickened at this.

Honestly, though, that was par for the
course. From the moment I came out and publicly transitioned, I've been
subjected to demeaning treatment. I’ve been stalked, cornered, and groped by
someone who thought that because I'm transsexual I owed him sex. It turns out,
Reverend Sandlin, that many people conclude that a transsexual should suffer
verbal harassment and return sex in gratitude. From the moment my front door
closes behind me until I return home at the end of my day, I am subjected to
sneering, vile sexual speculation, and outbursts of cruel laughter. Jobs have
been a litany of constant harassment and even violence that went unchecked by
my supervisors who pretended not to hear, not to see. For these reasons among
others, my mental health is shattered; I am now considered disabled, and am
currently unable to work in the field I once did, and am gratefully being
retrained. Even though I have classes and my lovely Church community, I’m
barely able to leave my home for the panic attacks and agoraphobia that come
with the homophobia and transphobia that I face. I find myself unable to
connect with others. I try, but people are just hard to trust for all the
betrayal I've been subjected to.

Does this qualify as “persecuted”? I feel persecuted. It’s certainly
difficult for me to offer grace, to forgive. Some days, it’s nigh impossible.
But, I try so hard to. I work on healing my spirit, transforming myself into
someone who can forgive and love the people who have done these things. This is
my trial, my cross. Not only must I pray for them, but I have to pray for the
strength to pray for them.

Rev. Sandlin, they have not harmed you.

Sure, in the most abstract sense they have
harmed us all, including themselves. But that’s abstract. In the concrete and
at the gut level, you’ve been looking in on these issues from the outside. I
don’t say this to discount that as clergy, you’ve made decisions about your
church and ministry regarding marriage equality. But at the end of the day, you’re
a cisgender straight man who has taken it upon himself to draw up rules of
engagement in the discussion about prejudice against people like me from people
like you.

Man bites dog is not a story. Heterosexual
forgives homophobe is not a story. Homosexual forgives homophobe.... THAT’S a
story. Transwoman forgives Transphobe.... THAT'S a story.

Do you remember the moment the family of his
victims forgave Dylann Roof, the young man who murdered nine people at Emmanuel
African Episcopal in the hope of starting a race war against African Americans?
Wasn’t that an amazing moment?

It was amazing because THEY were the ones to
forgive. They faced the man who murdered their family, who hoped to inspire
genocide against them and everyone like them, and they forgave him.

It would have been in poor taste for a white
family who had never been to that church to stand on a soap box, clear their
throats, and loudly forgive him, wouldn’t it? We all would have shaken our
heads if that white family took it upon themselves to suggest the proper way to
react to that tragedy.

In your blog post, you admit to having once
been Kim Davis. Convinced that the reader would be shocked that even one such
as you would have been a bigot, you then start a new paragraph, a mere two
words long:

“Yes, really.”

I never doubted it, Reverend Sandlin. I don’t
say this because I think you’re still in the grips of that hate, nor because I
think you’re a bad person. Consider that I live in the same culture as you, and
am of the same generation as you. I know
you were Kim Davis, because almost nobody…. LGBTQ folk included…. made it
through school without acquiring those attitudes. I certainly had them drilled
into me. The voice of that hateful person I was lives in my head to this day,
spouting invective against against me in my ear using language that I would
never say aloud. I’ve internalized the Kim Davis I once was, and am the sole
recipient of her condemnation. Every day and every hour, I hear that voice.
Part of that whole psychiatric disability thing, you know?

When people like you, and those straight and
cisgender people who have also rushed to admit that hey, yeah.... they totally hated people like me, I
feel anxious, seeing walls closing in. I don't need reminding just how
ubiquitous and gosh-darn understandable folks find it to hate me and my loved
ones. I know. I'm not allowed to forget. It's painful to be reminded at every
turn that recognizing my humanity was something you had to learn to do. Nor am
I shielded from the self-congratulation that goes hand in hand with publicly
rejecting that hate. I certainly do not think that you accomplished it is worth
special celebration. From my perspective, ceasing to hate people for the way
God made them is the bare minimum expectation of a decent human being, and I’m
reminded of Matthew 6:1:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness
before men to be noticed by them….”

You may well dismiss me, but I’m not alone in
this opinion, Reverend Sandlin. When I talk about how hurtful I find
#IWasKimDavis, people always thank me for putting voice to what they’ve kept
inside. They hurt too. And there are many of us. Oh, not every LGBTQ person
feels this way. But do you find it appropriate to weigh those who are injured
against those those who find it easy to move on?

It’s very telling that when we see
homo/bi/transphobia people are eager to admit that they once shared this hate.
You don’t see it when a racist is in the news. There was no “#IWasDonaldTrump”
when he said racist things about Mexicans. Why is that?

The question is rhetorical, because the
answer is apparent. It is rightly considered odious to be a racist. Although
many people go through journeys of overcoming racist attitudes, it’s almost
unheard of to hear people admit it. Even the KKK are insisting they're not racists! At yet, in this same cultural context admitting to having been a
homo/bi/transphobe? Folks are eager to do that, revealing that on some level, we
still consider that a reasonable position. To the culture at large,
homo/bi/transphobia makes enough sense that they can cop to it. Not that these
people still adhere to it NOW, mind you. NOW they know better. But, you know
how it is….

Yeah. I know. Intimately.

Ms. Davis represents a culture war that has
harmed and broken people, broken families. As a Christian, I believe that she
deserves forgiveness and grace from those of us who she’s harmed. We need to
work toward reconciliation with all children of God.

But the challenge is before US, not before
YOU.

You have taken this historical moment as
yours. You are defining it around yourself, and celebrating the strength of
character you display in not only moving past your bigotry but also forgiving
people who haven’t overcome theirs. Yet, you are not the aggrieved party.

You might have listened to stories of the
casualties in this culture war. You could have used your literal and figurative
pulpits to lift up the voices of those who’ve endured and been wounded.
Instead, you’ve chosen to center this issue on yourself and other cisgender
heterosexual individuals.

Someday, the suicide rates among LGBTQ folk
will even out to about that of the general population. Someday, the mental
illnesses and substance abuse that is rampant in our communities as a
consequence of bigotry and marginalization will subside. Someday those murders
of transfolk remember worldwide every November 20th will fade. Heck, someday we
may even be equal in the eyes
of the law and in social standing. Understand this, please: today is not that
day. Today is not your
day. Forgiveness is the challenge placed before we LGBTQ folks in faith
communities. It goes without saying that any majority group will easily forgive
their fellow majority group members for upholding a system that they profit
from. Even when it represses a minority group and they disagree with said
system, the forgiveness comes as no surprise. “Dog bites man” is not a story.

You’re not wrong about forgiveness and grace.
What you fail to realize is that this historic moment asks it of us, not you.
Don’t co-opt it. Don’t use it to bring glory to yourself. Sit with us. Listen.
Be a balm to those who are injured. As we heal, we will slowly come to forgive
this woman who is a figurehead of many cultural forces arrayed against us.